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Activists say multiple rocket-launchers are being used by Assad forces

Syrian forces have maintained their barrage of Homs, killing at least 50 people on Monday morning, according to a senior member of the main opposition group, the Syrian National Council.

"The tally that we have received from various activists in Homs since the shelling started this morning is 50, mostly civilians. The regime is acting as if it were immune to international intervention and has a free hand to use violence against the people," Catherine al-Talli told Reuters.

The bombardment of the city where scores of people died over the weekend continued as the US sought to build an international coalition outside the auspices of the UN which could impose further sanctions against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and China defended its decision to join Russia in vetoing a UN resolution calling on the Syrian president to resign.

The latest attacks on several districts of Homs formed the most violent bombardment in recent days, according to one Syria-based activist who had spoken to people in the city. Homs has been a centre of resistance during the 11-month uprising, in which more than 6,000 people have died.

A makeshift hospital in the neighbourhood of Baba Amr was among the targets hit by Monday's bombardment, according to the Local Co-ordinating Committees activist group.

One resident told Reuters that around 150 people had been wounded. "They want to drive the Free Syrian Army out," said Hussein Nader, referring to the rebel force of army deserters and gunmen. "Rockets are falling seconds apart on the same target."

Another local activist said multiple rocket-launchers were being used by Assad forces. Such claims have not been independently verified. Explosions could be heard and smoke could be seen rising from some buildings in live footage being broadcast by Arab satellite television stations.

In the Khalidiyeh district of the city, "we did not sleep all night", activist Majd Amer told Associated Press. "The regime is committing organised crimes." Amer said shelling had started at 3am local time, and most residents living on high floors either fled to shelters or to lower floors. Electricity was also cut.

There were also claims that a military post in the north-east of the country had destroyed over by Syrian army deserters overnight.

Three officers were killed and 19 soldiers captured in the attack, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. No deserters were killed in the attack on the village of al-Bara in the Edleb region, said the group.

Activists also said Zabadani, a town north-west of Damascus near the Lebanese border that has been largely under the control of Assad's opponents for weeks, had come under fire on Monday.

Anti-government activists say they fear that the veto will embolden Assad's regime, pushing the country into outright civil war.

Hillary Clinton said the US would work with other nations to try to tighten "regional and national" sanctions against Assad's government "to dry up the sources of funding and the arms shipments that are keeping the regime's war machine going".

"We will work to expose those who are still funding the regime and sending it weapons that are used against defenceless Syrians, including women and children," she said. "We will work with the friends of a democratic Syria around the world to support the opposition's peaceful political plans for change."

Clinton did not say what the new group would set out to achieve. But it appeared that the US might seek to help organise a "Friends of Syria" group ? proposed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy after the veto ? to advance the Arab League initiative given the inability to make headway at the UN because of Russian and Chinese opposition.

All 13 other members of the security council voted to back the resolution, which would have "fully supported" the Arab League plan for Assad to cede powers to a deputy, a withdrawal of troops from towns and a start to a transition to democracy.

Russia said the resolution was biased and would have meant taking sides in a civil war. Syria is Moscow's only big ally in the Middle East, home to a Russian naval base and client for its arms. China's veto appeared to follow Russia's lead.

China's state-run media said western intervention in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq showed the error of forced regime change. "Currently, the situation in Syria is extremely complex. Simplistically supporting one side and suppressing the other might seem a helpful way of turning things around, but in fact it would be sowing fresh seeds of disaster," the People's Daily said.

Full coverage as the head of the Met's phone-hacking inquiry, Daily Mail editor and former NoW showbiz editor give evidence

10.40am: Wootton says that he was assured following the conviction of News of the World royal correspondent Clive Goodman in 2006 that that was an "individual incident".

"When I started it was made absolutely clear that that behaviour would not be tolerated in any way by [then editor] Colin Myler," he tells the inquiry.

10.37am: Wootton joined the News of the World in 2007 and was at the paper until its closure in July last year.

There is an interview with Wootton shortly after the paper's closure on the BBC website.

10.34am: Dan Wootton, the former News of the World showbiz editor, has taken the stand.

10.33am: Akers has completed her evidence.

10.33am: Akers is asked about Operation Culmic, which is illegal accessing of computers belonging to others for financial gain.

This is a full investigation undertaken as part of a scoping exercise by Operation Tuleta. Operation Culmic was the subject of a recent BBC Panorama programme, Akers confirms.

One person has been arrested under Operation Culmic and are on bail until March.

Leveson says "my train isn't stopping" in terms of pushing ahead with his inquiry.

10.31am: Akers says that the Met is examining 4 terabytes ? a vast amount ? of information under Operation Tuleta.

She describes it as a "huge amount, vast" when asked what it would look like if printed out.

10.29am: Jay asks about Operation Tuleta.

Akers says that about 20 police officers are looking into 57 claims of "data intrusion" on behalf of journalists.

Most of these claims relate to computer hacking, medical records and phone hacking.

Some of these claims go back to as long ago as the late 1980s, Akers says. "Some of these are connected to very historic investigations that the Met has undertaken," she adds.

10.27am: Akers is asked about timing of Operation Elveden.

She says she is "less confident in saying we're nearer the end than the beginning" with Elveden, unlike Operation Weeting.

Akers says because News International is giving "voluntary disclosure" to police, the Met is not obtaining evidence via a production order. Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, the police are not entitled to seek a warrant where there is co-operation.

10.25am: Akers says that information from News Corp's MSC led to the arrest of a journalist at the Sun in November last year.

The further arrests at the Sun last month came from disclosures from the MSC "as well as our own analysis" of material handed over, Akers confirms.

The police want to question one further journalist who is abroad, she adds.

10.23am: Akers says that the Met police has a "co-operative working relationship" with News Corp's internal investigation unit, the management and standards committee (MSC).

Akers says that "reasonably senior" News of the World journalists have been arrested under Operation Elveden between June and December.

No police officers have been identified as suspects in relation to the News of the World, Akers confirms. The material has come from the newspapers and so the sources are not identified.

10.19am: Akers is asked about Operation Elveden, the investigation into payments to police officers by journalists.

Akers says there is a "very legitimate public interest" in investigating this.

She adds that 40 police officers and staff are currently working on Elveden, but that team will be expanded to 61 officers in light of the investigation into the Sun.

Fourteen people have been arrested so far under Elveden.

10.18am: Jay asks if Akers "is nearer the finishing line than the starting gun". She agrees.

Akers adds that a total of 90 police officers are working on Operation Weeting, including 35 who are "dedicated to the victims, which has been quite time consuming".

10.17am: Akers says that "a number of key witnesses" have come forward but the police want to see more. "That process is ongoing. It will take a few more months," Akers tells the inquiry.

Jay says that 300m emails have been retrieved from News International, including material that the police thought had been lost.

Akers says the search of that material is in a relatively advanced stage. The Met police has found hard archives of some material.

10.15am: The police have contacted 581 of those 829 likely phone hacking victims, Akers says. A further 231 are uncontactable, but are identified in Mulcaire's notes. Seventeen people have not been contacted for "operational reasons".

Two of the 17 people arrested under Operation Weeting have had no further action taken against them and 15 are on bail.

10.13am: The number of people contacted by police or writing in to police asking if they were hacked is 2,900, Akers confirms. Of those, 1,578 actually appeared in Mulcaire's notes.

Akers says there are 829 "likely" victims ? those who have detail around their names that make it likely they were hacked or had potential to be hacked.

10.08am: Jay confirms that there are 6,349 potential victims ? identifiable names of people in information held under Operation Weeting ? of phone hacking. There are 11,000 pages in the seized notes of private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. The number of names with phone numbers alongside is 4,375.

10.05am: Akers is the police chief in charge of the Operation Weeting investigation into phone hacking; the Operation Tuleta investigation into computer hacking to procure information on behalf of newspapers; and Operating Elveden, the police investigation into inappropriate payments to police officers by journalists.

10.02am: Sue Akers, the detective assistant commissioner of the Met police, has taken the stand.

Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry, is leading the questioning.

9.59am: Our correspondent at the Royal Courts of Justice, Lisa O'Carroll, has just tweeted that Sue Akers, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Met police, will be the first witness of the day. Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre is expected to appear this afternoon.

#leveson order for today Akers, Owens, wooton, then dacre in the afternoon

? lisa o'carroll (@lisaocarroll) February 6, 2012

9.41am: Former News of the World showbiz correspondent Dan Wootton has revealed his pre-Leveson preparation: an uplifting dose of the Canadian singer Alanis Morissette.

Big morning ahead so I'm listening to Alanis. Obv.

? Dan Wootton (@danwootton) February 6, 2012

9.40am: Good morning and welcome to the Leveson inquiry live blog.

Paul Dacre, editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail, and Sue Akers, the Metropolitan police deputy assistant commissioner in charge of three major investigations into alleged press illegality, will give evidence to the inquiry today.

Fleet Street's longest-serving newspaper editor is likely to be asked about the Daily Mail's use of the private investigator Steve Whittamore, as uncovered in the information commissioner's report What Price Privacy Now? in 2006. Dacre is also expected to be asked about Associated Newspapers' accusation of "mendacious smears" against Hugh Grant after the actor gave evidence to the inquiry last year.

Akers will become the first serving police officer to be quizzed by the Leveson inquiry.

Two journalists, the Sunday Mirror reporter Nick Owens and the former News of the World showbiz correspondent Dan Wootton, will also appear.

Follow the inquiry live from 10am.

Justine Greening to attend firm's AGM to vote against executive payout ? though Labour says she is failing to use full powers

The transport secretary, Justine Greening, is planning to vote against a proposed £20m bonus pool for Network Rail executives. But she was accused by Labour of failing to use her powers to put a stop to the payments.

On Friday, she will attend Network Rail's annual general meeting to vote against a package which could see chief executive Sir David Higgins collect a £340,000 payout in addition to his £560,000 basic salary.

Greening's intervention will put pressure on Network Rail to reduce the bonuses which have been paid annually to executives for many years. The company that operates most of Britain's railway structure has faced criticism over its safety record and poor track conditions.

"I'm going to go to the meeting next Friday, I'm going to vote against them," said Greening on the BBC's Sunday Politics programme. It will be the first time that a minister of state has voted against bonuses at Network Rail.

Despite her vote against the company, she claimed that she would not have the powers to stop the payments from going through. "The governance structure that the last government set up means I can go and vote against it. The problem we have got is that won't actually change the result," she said.

However, Labour is claiming that the Department for Transport has powers over remuneration and incentive schemes thanks to its position as Network Rail's "special member".

Maria Eagle, the shadow transport secretary, said: "Greening is wrong to say that she cannot block these bonuses ? It is difficult to see why Network Rail would have felt able to propose this new bonus package without knowing if it had ministerial backing."

Those close to Greening hit back, saying that Labour has misinterpreted company documents. "Justine can't block bonuses, because she has one vote among 80. Labour knows that the government doesn't have a power of veto and when in office repeatedly said that bonuses were an issue for Network Rail and not for government," a source said.

Higgins will also share in a long-term bonus scheme which could be worth up to £15.6m over the next three years for the rail group's six executive directors. The six will also earn £2.3m a year in salaries plus a maximum of £4.2m in bonuses.

On the same day that Greening casts her vote, Barclays will announce an estimated £1.7bn bonus pool, some 30% less than last year but a sum that will see staff at its Barclays Capital arm remain among the highest-paid UK workers, earning an average of £210,000 each.

Barclays, one of the world's largest investment banks, is forecast to report profits of £6bn, barely changed on a year ago despite the eurozone crisis.

While the bonus of its chief executive, Bob Diamond, is unlikely to be revealed until March, he could get up to £11m.

The latest round of payouts will fuel the controversy around City pay, which prompted Royal Bank of Scotland's chief executive, Stephen Hester, to waive his near-£1m bonus a week ago.

More than 20 MPs have signed a Commons motion saying Network Rail had been "found by the Office of Rail Regulation to be in breach of its licence" and had been responsible for "major asset failures, congested routes and poor management of track condition".

Last week, the company admitted health and safety breaches over the deaths of two teenagers killed at a level crossing in Essex in 2005.

A Network Rail spokesperson said that no decisions have yet been taken on any potential bonuses. "Friday's vote is not on whether directors will receive a bonus but on a proposed scheme, the shape of which is a result of discussions with our regulator. The independent remuneration committee will have full discretion on any decision to award bonuses."

Monarch reminds Britain of 'spirit of togetherness' as Republic group prepare to demonstrate against 60th anniversary pageant

The Queen is issuing a message of thanks to the public on Monday morning on the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne.

In a statement from Buckingham Palace, the 85-year-old monarch promises to dedicate herself anew to the service of the country, and echoes a call that she made in her Christmas message for the restoration of a national spirit of togetherness.

The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh will spend the day at Sandringham, the Norfolk mansion where her father, George VI, died in his sleep on 6 February 1952.

The couple were out in the snow on Sunday, for a service at West Newton church, on the estate and being greeted with flowers from well-wishers. They visited the local Sunday school in the village hall, but a 90th anniversary parade by the Royal British Legion, in King's Lynn, which the duke had planned to attend, was cancelled due to the weather.

The Queen's message says: "Today, as I mark 60 years as your Queen, I am writing to thank you for the wonderful support and encouragement that you have given to me and Prince Philip over these years and to tell you how deeply moved we have been to receive so many kind messages about the diamond jubilee.

"In this special year, as I dedicate myself anew to your service, I hope that we will all be reminded of the power of togetherness and the convening strength of family friendship and good neighbourliness, examples of which I have been fortunate to see throughout my reign and which my family and I look forward to seeing in many forms as we travel throughout the UK and the wider Commonwealth.

"I hope also that this jubilee year will be a time to give thanks for the great advances that have been made since 1952 and to look forward to the future with clear heads and warm hearts as we join together in our celebrations. I send my sincere good wishes to you all."

Responding, David Cameron praised the Queen's dignity and authority, guiding and uniting Britain and the Commonwealth over six decades. To view her as a glittering ornament was to "misunderstand" the constitution. "Always dedicated, always resolute and always respected, she is a source of wisdom and continuity," he said.

Cameron, the 12th PM of the reign, who was not even born until she had been on the throne for more than 14 years, added: "All my life and for the lives of most people in this country she has always been there for us. Today and this year we have the chance to say thank you."

The main focus of the celebrations will be the first weekend in June, extended by two successive bank holidays, when there will be a riverboat pageant of 1,000 vessels sailing down the Thames through London, expected to be attended by a million spectators, an open-air concert at Buckingham Palace, and a service at St Paul's Cathedral.

anti-monarchy group Republic, which said its members would demonstrate peacefully against the pageant, argued that schools and the BBC should not be overly enthusiastic about the celebrations.

The Queen and duke are due to visit many areas of Britain and Northern Ireland in the summer, and other members of the royal family are visiting Commonwealth nations, starting in March with Prince Harry in his first official solo tour, to the Caribbean and Latin America.

On Mondaya jubilee website, is being launched with news about events during the year and two newly commissioned photographs of the Queen. There will also be commemorative postage stamps and a charitable diamond jubilee trust, led by Sir John Major, to raise money for medical research and education across the Commonwealth.

The former prime minister said the trust would "identify charitable projects that would enrich the lives and opportunities of all its citizens to provide a lasting legacy".

The anniversary was not met entirely with unalloyed joy however as some economists said the June holiday could dent GDP by 0.5% in the second quarter as firms closed and people took extra leave, though they conceded this could be made up by sales of jubilee souvenirs, food and drink purchases for street parties, and tourist revenue.

Boc said he was resigning 'to ease the social situation', after weeks of protests over austerity measures

The Romanian prime minister has announced he and his government will resign immediately to protect the stability of the country.

Emil Boc said on Monday he was resigning "to ease the social situation" ? referring to weeks of protests in Romania over austerity measures he introduced in 2010.

Boc, who became prime minister in 2008, urged Romania's feuding politicians to be mature and rapidly vote for a new government.

He defended his record, saying he had taken "difficult decisions thinking about the future of Romania, not because I wanted to, but because I had to".

He added that the International Monetary Fund had forecast growth of up to 2% this year ? lower than expected, but higher than the European Union average.

Romania signed up for a $26bn (£16bn) loan with the IMF, the EU and the World Bank in 2009 to help pay salaries and pensions, after the economy shrank by more than 7%.

In 2010, the government increased sales tax from 19% to 24% and cut public workers' salaries by a quarter to reduce the budget deficit.

In January, Romanians staged weeks of protests to express anger at cronyism and a perception that the government was not interested in the problems of ordinary people in this country with a population of 22 million.

They protested against low living standards, widespread corruption and the passage of some laws without a parliamentary debate.

"I know that I made difficult decisions, but the fruits have begun to appear," Boc said in a statement. "The most important thing is the economic stability of the country," he said, adding, "In times of crisis, the government is not in a popularity contest, but is saving the country."

Activists say multiple rocket-launchers are being used by Assad forces

Syrian forces have maintained their barrage of Homs, killing at least 50 people on Monday morning, according to a senior member of the main opposition group, the Syrian National Council.

"The tally that we have received from various activists in Homs since the shelling started this morning is 50, mostly civilians. The regime is acting as if it were immune to international intervention and has a free hand to use violence against the people," Catherine al-Talli told Reuters.

The bombardment of the city where scores of people died over the weekend continued as the US sought to build an international coalition outside the auspices of the UN which could impose further sanctions against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and China defended its decision to join Russia in vetoing a UN resolution calling on the Syrian president to resign.

The latest attacks on several districts of Homs formed the most violent bombardment in recent days, according to one Syria-based activist who had spoken to people in the city. Homs has been a centre of resistance during the 11-month uprising, in which more than 6,000 people have died.

A makeshift hospital in the neighbourhood of Baba Amr was among the targets hit by Monday's bombardment, according to the Local Co-ordinating Committees activist group.

One resident told Reuters that around 150 people had been wounded. "They want to drive the Free Syrian Army out," said Hussein Nader, referring to the rebel force of army deserters and gunmen. "Rockets are falling seconds apart on the same target."

Another local activist said multiple rocket-launchers were being used by Assad forces. Such claims have not been independently verified. Explosions could be heard and smoke could be seen rising from some buildings in live footage being broadcast by Arab satellite television stations.

In the Khalidiyeh district of the city, "we did not sleep all night", activist Majd Amer told Associated Press. "The regime is committing organised crimes." Amer said shelling had started at 3am local time, and most residents living on high floors either fled to shelters or to lower floors. Electricity was also cut.

There were also claims that a military post in the north-east of the country had destroyed over by Syrian army deserters overnight.

Three officers were killed and 19 soldiers captured in the attack, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. No deserters were killed in the attack on the village of al-Bara in the Edleb region, said the group.

Activists also said Zabadani, a town north-west of Damascus near the Lebanese border that has been largely under the control of Assad's opponents for weeks, had come under fire on Monday.

Anti-government activists say they fear that the veto will embolden Assad's regime, pushing the country into outright civil war.

Hillary Clinton said the US would work with other nations to try to tighten "regional and national" sanctions against Assad's government "to dry up the sources of funding and the arms shipments that are keeping the regime's war machine going".

"We will work to expose those who are still funding the regime and sending it weapons that are used against defenceless Syrians, including women and children," she said. "We will work with the friends of a democratic Syria around the world to support the opposition's peaceful political plans for change."

Clinton did not say what the new group would set out to achieve. But it appeared that the US might seek to help organise a "Friends of Syria" group ? proposed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy after the veto ? to advance the Arab League initiative given the inability to make headway at the UN because of Russian and Chinese opposition.

All 13 other members of the security council voted to back the resolution, which would have "fully supported" the Arab League plan for Assad to cede powers to a deputy, a withdrawal of troops from towns and a start to a transition to democracy.

Russia said the resolution was biased and would have meant taking sides in a civil war. Syria is Moscow's only big ally in the Middle East, home to a Russian naval base and client for its arms. China's veto appeared to follow Russia's lead.

China's state-run media said western intervention in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq showed the error of forced regime change. "Currently, the situation in Syria is extremely complex. Simplistically supporting one side and suppressing the other might seem a helpful way of turning things around, but in fact it would be sowing fresh seeds of disaster," the People's Daily said.

Mitt Romney now clear favourite to win Republican presidential nomination after winning three out five opening contests

Newt Gingrich scrambled on Sunday to keep his presidential bid alive after a heavy defeat in the Nevada caucus, vowing as a conservative to hound frontrunner Mitt Romney to the last.

But the exit polls in Nevada showed Gingrich's support among the very conservative and among evangelicals bleeding away, as Republican voters of various shades latch on to Romney as the best prospect of beating Barack Obama.

Romney took 48% in Nevada, a more than twice Gingrich's 23%. Ron Paul was not far behind with 18.5%, and Rick Santorum fourth with 11%.

Nevada establishes Romney as the clear favourite for the nomination, coming after his decisive win in Florida and taken with what is expected to be a run of wins in six other states scheduled to vote this month. He has now won three out of five opening contests.

Gingrich abandoned the usual post-results speech for a press conference during which he angrily accused Romney of running a ruthless and dishonest campaign, dismissing rumours he was about to quit. Gingrich said he would fight all the way to the nomination convention in Florida in August, arguing that his more conservative philosophy would ultimately appeal over Romney's "moderate" policies.

Elaborating on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, Gingrich said Romney's record on abortion, gun control and taxes would disqualify him in the minds of conservatives.

"My goal over the next few weeks is to draw a very sharp distinction between Romney's positions, which the Wall Street Journal described as timid and, in terms of tax policies, as being like Obama."

"The challenge is to say: do you really want to go in to a fall election with a moderate candidate? The last two times we nominated a moderate ? 1996 and 2008 ? we lost badly. A conservative candidate can offer a much greater contrast with President [Barack] Obama."

Gingrich acknowledged that the coming votes would be difficult, but said that his goal is to keep the campaign alive until Super Tuesday on 6 March when several conservative states are among 10 having contests, and he is "in much more favourable territory".

"We want to get to Georgia, to Alabama, to Tennessee, to Texas. We believe by the time Texas is over [in April], we'll be very, very competitive in delegate count. The key from my standpoint is to make this a big choice campaign," he said.

But Gingrich faces a struggle to reestablish himself as a credible candidate. Exit polls showed support falling away among conservatives, evangelicals and Tea Party supporters who delivered him victory in South Carolina and Florida; in Nevada they swung heavily towards Romney.

However, the polls also showed little enthusiasm for Romney. Four out of 10 Republican voters in Nevada said they were principally focused on getting Obama out of the White House, suggesting many are prepared to compromise some ideological beliefs to back the man they best believe can do that. Romney is also more trusted on the economy.

In Nevada, Gingrich painted himself as the anti-establishment candidate, taking on not just Washington but the leadership of his own party.

"I was surprised by the degree to which the establishment has closed ranks and made quite clear that they're desperate over the prospect of a Gingrich presidency," he said.

Gingrich may also find his single most important source of support drying up. The New York Times reported that the billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has spent at least $10m on attack adverts for Gingrich, has he will back Romney if it is clear he will be the nominee.

Gingrich previously revived his campaign with strong performances in television debates, which helped his victory in the South Carolina primary, before Romney hit back hard in debates in Florida. However, there are no more debates until next month.

In his victory speech in Las Vegas, Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, referred to his having won in Nevada during what turned out to be his failed bid for president four years ago, but said that this time it would be different: "This time I'm going to take it to the White House."

Boc said he was resigning 'to ease the social situation', after weeks of protests over austerity measures

The Romanian prime minister has announced he and his government will resign immediately to protect the stability of the country.

Emil Boc said on Monday he was resigning "to ease the social situation" ? referring to weeks of protests in Romania over austerity measures he introduced in 2010.

Boc, who became prime minister in 2008, urged Romania's feuding politicians to be mature and rapidly vote for a new government.

He defended his record, saying he had taken "difficult decisions thinking about the future of Romania, not because I wanted to, but because I had to".

He added that the International Monetary Fund had forecast growth of up to 2% this year ? lower than expected, but higher than the European Union average.

Romania signed up for a $26bn (£16bn) loan with the IMF, the EU and the World Bank in 2009 to help pay salaries and pensions, after the economy shrank by more than 7%.

In 2010, the government increased sales tax from 19% to 24% and cut public workers' salaries by a quarter to reduce the budget deficit.

In January, Romanians staged weeks of protests to express anger at cronyism and a perception that the government was not interested in the problems of ordinary people in this country with a population of 22 million.

They protested against low living standards, widespread corruption and the passage of some laws without a parliamentary debate.

"I know that I made difficult decisions, but the fruits have begun to appear," Boc said in a statement. "The most important thing is the economic stability of the country," he said, adding, "In times of crisis, the government is not in a popularity contest, but is saving the country."

If there is one single impediment to Mitt Romney?s campaign, it is his utter inscrutability, his perplexing failure to schmooze with voters. Romney is seen by many as hollow, robotic, as stiff as his hair-sprayed coiffure.

But to me, Mitt Romney isn?t stiff. He?s just a Mormon.

I know, because I grew up in Ogden, Utah, a city of about 83,000 people, 60 percent of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (I?m not one.) Though Romney was raised in suburban Detroit, he seems a product of Ogden?s Mormon milieu ? a town lodged firmly in the 1950s, where homeowners leave their doors unlocked at night, teenagers cruise the boulevard, or ?vard,? on weekends and packs of Mormon men comb the neighborhoods after windstorms to clear away fallen branches.

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Most thrillers do not send me hustling off to Wikipedia for a refresher course in the Stoic philosophy of the first century A.D. Greek sage Epictetus. But that's where I found myself before commencing this review of "The Fear Index," by Robert Harris. I wanted to be sure I was properly grounded before straying into treacherous territory: the nature of being in our phantasmagorical high-finance, high-tech era.

I certainly had no time to brush up while actually reading the novel. "The Fear Index" is a perfect exemplar of the species "taut thriller." It's a book whose pages cannot be turned fast enough; a mystery with just a dash of science fiction and plot twists ripped from the business news headlines of the past year. Beware taking this book to bed with you, because you will stay up too late. (And your dreams will be queasy.)

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The 2012 presidential election is rapidly shaping up to become a critical battle for the future of the American economy. In his State of the Union address, Barack Obama attempted to draw a sharp contrast with the ?you?re-on-your-own economics? on display in Republican primary debates.

But progressives have their work cut out for them. Despite a triumphant election in 2008, a financial crisis that seemingly discredited the free-market deregulatory fervor and the significant policy achievements of the Obama administration in economic stimulus, healthcare reform and financial regulation, the very notions of government regulation, of social safety nets and of economic fairness are under attack.

For too long progressives have been content to work within an economic discourse largely set by conservative principles, hostile to state action while idolizing free markets and corporate power. Indeed, the last time a sitting Democratic president launched a reelection campaign with his State of the Union address, it was Bill Clinton, who declared proudly that ?the era of big government is over.?

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(updated below - Update II)

On December 30 of last year, ABC News reported on a 16-year-old Pakistani boy, Tariq Khan, who was killed with his 12-year-old cousin when a car in which he was riding was hit with a missile fired by a U.S. drone. As I noted at the time, the report contained this extraordinary passage buried in the middle:

Asked for documentation of Tariq and Waheed's deaths, Akbar did not provide pictures of the missile strike scene. Virtually none exist, since drones often target people who show up at the scene of an attack.

What made that sentence so amazing was that it basically amounts to a report that the U.S. first kills people with drones, then fires on the rescuers and others who arrive at the scene where the new corpses and injured victims lie.

In a just-released, richly documented report, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, on behalf of the Sunday Times, documents that this is exactly what the U.S. is doing -- and worse:

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Privatizing the government is one of the most active projects of the early 21st century.

Everything we once expected the government to do -- from education to regulatory rule-writing to military operations to healthcare services to prison management -- it now does less of, preferring to support markets in which these services are done through independent, profit-maximizing agents. Tools such as contracting out, vouchering and the selling-off of state assets have been used to remake the government during our market-worshipping era.

Privatization is one of the few political projects that enjoys bipartisan support: Conservatives cheer the rollback of the state, and liberals like to claim that the virtues of the free market are being used towards the egalitarian ends of public policy. The fraud and waste that often come with outsourcing these services has been well-documented. The private management in Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the lobbying efforts of corporate prisons have all provided horror stories of what happens when cronyism guides decision-making on behalf of the state. But privatization as standard government practice has problems that go far beyond the abuses of any single incident.

Continue Reading...

Four years ago, Sen. Barack Obama, candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, began to draw into focus a meme that for many of us defined what was different about his campaign, and what made his election critical. As he said in Columbia, S.C., on Jan. 26, 2008,

We are up against the belief that it?s all right for lobbyists to dominate our government ? that they are just part of the system in Washington. But we know that the undue influence of lobbyists is part of the problem, and this election is our chance to say that we?re not going to let them stand in our way anymore.

On April 2, he told an audience in Philadelphia:

If we?re not willing to take up that fight, then real change ? change that will make a lasting difference in the lives of ordinary Americans ? will keep getting blocked by the defenders of the status quo.

Two weeks later, Washington, D.C.:

But let me be clear ? this isn?t just about ending the failed policies of the Bush years; it?s about ending the failed system in Washington that produces those policies. For far too long, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, Washington has allowed Wall Street to use lobbyists and campaign contributions to rig the system and get its way, no matter what it costs ordinary Americans

Continue Reading...

In this funny, sometimes sobering tale of the American Dream gone wrong, Boyet Hernandez, a fey-but-straight Filipino fashionista, arrives in the U.S. in 2002 to set his sights on the fashion world. He's got a fresh degree from FIM, the Fashion Institute of Makati, a sewing machine, and a small stipend from his parents back home. Possessing only the proverbial dollar and a dream, he's determined to hang his own clothing line on the gilded runway. But due to a combination of naiveté and blind ambition, Hernandez, who was raised Catholic, has the misfortune to accept funding from the wrong patron: the flamboyant and charismatic Ahmed Qureshi -- an "angel" investor with some sartorial sense, mysterious millions, and a rather-too-vague global business.

Continue Reading...

"Move back!" shouted the cop wielding a clear Plexiglas shield emblazoned with the words "U.S. Park Police" as he moved into the crowd of demonstrators thronging McPherson Square on Saturday afternoon.  The photographer next to me was shouting, "I'm press!" but that didn't seem to impress the phalanx of officers advancing on us, applying their shields to our shoulders.

"Move back!" the cop explained, and I went sprawling into what used to be the main information tent of OccupyDC. It was the place where you could always find someone who could tell you about the camp's activities. It was a place where I had debated fiat money with a Ron Paul supporter, chatted with a delusional homeless man, and talked union politics with a woman from National Nurses United. Now the tent was a flat lumpy mess, and people were scrambling over it to get away from the suddenly aggressive cops. Nearby, mounted officers on horses were slowly wading their steeds into a river of people, and some screamed in panic at the approach of the massive animals.

What had started 12 hours earlier as a politically tinged eviction of an unsanitary but entirely peaceful encampment had suddenly turned into an aggressive display of force by the National Park Police officers (including 24 officers bused in from New York City.)

Continue Reading...

There was never any real suspense over which candidate would win the Nevada Republican caucuses. Mitt Romney racked up a landslide win in the state four years ago, and he wasn't even the GOP front-runner back then. The state is demographically suited to him -- about a quarter of the GOP caucus electorate is Mormon, and Mormons have been supporting Romney's campaign at roughly a 90 percent clip -- and he's put far more effort into it than any other candidate, except Ron Paul.

So for Newt Gingrich, there's no shame per se in the fact that he was beaten by Romney on Saturday night. But that he was in danger of finishing behind Ron Paul is a problem for the former House speaker, whose main task for February -- a month littered with Mitt-friendly contests -- is to fare credibly enough to reassure voters in the Super Tuesday primaries of early March that the GOP contest is still a real two-man race between him and Romney.

Continue Reading...

In the bathroom I pee on the little plastic stick and then place it care­fully on the back of the toilet. I button my jeans and walk back into my bedroom, where I pick up the phone.

Colin is on the other end of the line.

Did you take it?

Yeah.

Well?

You have to wait, like, five minutes, I say.

Oh.

It is January, late at night, and the deep banks of snow outside the windows glow in the dark. Colin is in Atlanta and I am in Vermont. My mother has been dead for exactly one year.

I am back at Marlboro College, picking up after a one-year hiatus following my mother?s death. I?m living off campus, in a subsidized two-story condo in town, with a classmate named Tricia.

Like me, she is a poetry major.

I have been back at Marlboro less than a week when I realize that my period is late. I count the dates backward and then forward again, give it a few more days, and finally buy a test kit at Walmart.

I call Colin that night. We had been seeing each other for less than six months when I left Atlanta to return to school. I had taken a year off from school after my mother?s death, but my father and I both decided that it was time for me to get back in the swing of things.

Continue Reading...

Architecture 2030, a building sector research and advocacy group, issued a report last week asserting that the greening of the U.S. building sector is on track to deliver far more energy savings than government officials predicted only a handful of years ago, with important implications for the country's energy and climate picture.  [...]

Energy consumption from buildings will increase by 14 percent from 2005 to 2030, the EIA said, down from the 44 percent spike it predicted seven years ago. Architecture 2030 says it amounts to eliminating the electricity output from 490 500-megawatt coal-fired plants over the same 25-year period.

The new projections mean Americans will save an additional $3.7 trillion on energy bills through 2030.

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2005:

Permit me to indulge in a bit of timely nostalgia: Two years ago to this very day, on a chilly (but not bitter) winter night, fifteen New Yorkers of all stripes crowded into a tiny bar in lower Manhattan for the very, very first Dean meetup ever. Perhaps a couple of hundred other Americans were doing the same thing in different spots around the country.

We were from Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan; we were young and not so young; we were black, white and Asian; we were gay, we were straight - in other words, we were a quintessentially New York crowd. And above all, we were excited about this guy named Howard Dean, who was running for president and saying the kind of things we had all been longing to hear.

Our enthusiasm, though, was tempered a bit by our uncertainty. No one had heard a peep from the campaign (which had only posted a link to Meetup.com on its website a few days earlier - quite some time after Jerome Armstrong first started promoting it at MyDD). Meetup (the company) had also never done political gatherings before, so they were not in a position to offer much guidance, either.

What struck me most - what surprised me most - was that I alone among this group had previously worked on a political campaign. [...]

Tweet of the Day:

High Impact Posts are here. Top Comments are here.

Billboard from Un-Fair Campaign

Though a lot of attention has been focused on the racism and privilege inherent in recent remarks made by Republican presidential candidates, designed to garner support from the party's southern and tea party base, and the actions of elected officials like Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, too often, fingers are unfairly pointed at our warmer climes as being the sole site of racist activity and/or attitudes. Frankly, the history of racism in the U.S. has no regional boundaries; it was embedded in our roots from the moment indigenous occupants were attacked and removed. Hand in hand with systemic racism goes what those engaged in civil rights struggles and the academic study of racial disparity have dubbed "white privilege," which is a cornerstone of  the academic discipline of Critical Race Theory (CRT).  

A northern case in point is Duluth, Minnesota, where there has been controversy over a recently launched campaign designed to confront racism and white privilege.

Dubbed the Un-Fair Campaign, a coalition of local groups and two area colleges and universities are engaged in sparking a dialogue to address and fight against racism and privilege as a responsibility of not just those who are oppressed by it, but also those who may not even realize that they contribute to it. Only when members of the white majority engage in self-examination and action about our history and current day racial divides will we vanquish a prime corroding element in our democracy.

The Twin Ports is a predominantly white community (89%). In a recent report by the Knight Foundation entitled Soul of the Community, the results of a three-year study reports: The [Duluth area] community significantly under-performs against the comparison group overall in four of the seven individual openness measures. [...] Fewer residents than in other comparable communities say it is a good place for racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, young adults without children, and talented college graduates looking for work.

People of color experience incidents of racism every day, and they have long asked ?when will white people in our community stand up and speak out about racism?? This campaign is part of a response to that question. Racial justice will never be achieved until we as white people address white privilege and work to change it.

Continue reading below the fold.

Gov. Romney visualizes his concern for the poor (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

 

"I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it."

The extent of Romney's concern for the poor is to make sure that there's a safety net adequate to making sure the very poor don't starve to death on the street. And if, for some reason, the safety net is "broken" and has a problem keeping the very poor from starving in the street, he'll fix that. After all, starving people on the street wouldn't look good for Romney if he's president. He's going to be running for re-election, for pete's sake. But will he do anything to actively help the very poor no longer be very poor in a way that actually involves keeping them alive? Doesn't seem that way; after all, he's not very concerned about them.

But maybe leaving the very poor alone is the best we can hope for from Republican candidates. Barring a brokered convention resulting from party stalwarts realizing in absolute horror what type of nominee awaits them, the only other remotely possible Republican nominee is Newt Gingrich. At the crest of his popularity, the former speaker of the House had just dominated the South Carolina primary, leading to a second round of speculation that winning the nomination was within the realm of possibility for him. At his victory speech, this is but a small part of what he had to say:

And I want to go into every neighborhood of every ethnic background in every part of the country and say to people very simply: if you want your children to have a life of dependency and food stamps, you have a candidate: that's Barack Obama. If you want your children to have a life of independency [sic] and paychecks: that's Newt Gingrich, and I'll bet you we have votes everywhere.

Unlike Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich actually is concerned about the very poor. While many people may take a quick look at Gingrich's association of ethnic backgrounds and food stamps?or his comments that poor children lack a work ethic and need to work as school janitors?the truth is more complicated, as Peter Beinart explains:

The fascinating thing about the exchange is that Gingrich is not a racist. I suspect he genuinely cares about the African-American poor. In fact, he?s convinced himself that his willingness to say things that many African-Americans consider insulting is an expression of that concern; that only he cares enough about African-Americans to speak the ?politically incorrect? truths that black leaders won?t.

Gingrich?s problem isn?t racism; it?s ignorance. Only someone profoundly ignorant of African-American politics would suggest that black Americans have spent the past few decades seeking food stamps, not jobs.

Yes, Gingrich and many ofhis fellow conservative ideologues are concerned about the poor and may actually want to help, but their definition of "helping" isn't the same one that you or I might have. A person with common sense may take a look at the plight of the poor and understand the importance of ensuring access to education, jobs and environmental justice. Conservative ideologues like Newt Gingrich think about the poor differently: In this worldview, the poor?especially black people?are no longer capable of taking advantage of those opportunities because the welfare state and food stamps have eroded their ability to have the work ethic required to take advantage of those opportunities. Consequently, the logic goes, the social safety net must be destroyed and poor minorities will have to swallow the bitter medicine that will make them and the country better in the long run.

Conversatives can keep wondering why so many poor people vote for Democrats. Perhaps its because the Republican Party only offers two approaches: the aloof, dispassionate plutocracy as embodied by Mitt Romney, or the destructively ideological social engineering espoused by Newt Gingrich. Democrats like Barack Obama, meanwhile, continue to try to expand equality of opportunity, and the results in November will once again reflect that philosophical disparity.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You make me want to move to Oregon, just so I can say "I voted for that guy!"

If you have more time, I think it would be great if you would do something like a Slashdot interview (although I hear the kids these days are doing reddit AMAs instead? Either or.)

Thank you for your efforts.

You also stood up against these efforts in congress before others even considered it worth their time. Thanks for that.

As a Canadian, I can't really threaten any senators or reps with my vote, but I sincerely hope your consituents reward you when the time comes.

How could anyone seriously believe that Hollywood drives popular culture considering that most movies nowadays are either remakes or sequels.

How is it possible to drive culture forward when nearly everything you produce is from the past?!

I find this absolutely fascinating. Redbox is willing to go to court to fight WB for WB's own sake. This is like some kind of forced intervention for a suicidal person. WB wants to shoot themselves in the foot and Redbox is fighting to stop them. It's almost surreal.

New domain name? -Check
Wikipedia the US relations with the TLD country? -Check
48 hours left before superbowl to allow DNS propagation? -Check
Make sure to email all members the new URL? -Check

How much money did ICE waste on this again?

He is the head of the MPAA, use of computers and the interwebs is prohibited.

"Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to create an artificial fish scarcity, and he'll eat steak for a lifetime." -Stephen Colbert

Don't forget the saying "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." By making their movies completely inaccessible to the people that want them, WB is increasing the excitement their fans have for the movies. By not allowing them to add movies to their queue, the fans will be anxiously checking Netflix daily to see when they can add the movie they wish to watch. Many of those fans will become so excited about the movie that their money will fly out of their wallets and into WB's underground vault. At which point Scrooge McDuck will dive into the pool of cash while WB executives sip celebratory martinis and discuss which sequel to make a sequel of next.

Maybe nobody will care about illuminated manuscripts 50 years from now, but I do ... Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they spent hundreds of man hours copying it out by hand and filling it with unique graphical and typographical touches. A printing plate always feels like we could lose that, change that, move the metal type around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it's just not permanent enough.

Hey Techdirt,

You are all invited to come watch the great athletic event held once a year, roughly 7 weeks before the vernal equinox, played by large athletic males of the teams representing persons who love their country, as well the unusually large persons living in the 3rd largest state of the union of former colonies located in North America. This year said contest will be be held in the capital city of the state admitted on December 11, 1816 to said union, inside the domed sports arena named after a regional manufacturer and distributor of automotive oil, additives, and lubricants.

We will be watching said contest on the large viewing apparatus designed and constructed by the leading electronics maker from the southern most country of the Korean Peninsula, with service provided by the cable provider recently separated from the large conglomerate media company with interests from magazines, to movie studies, and recently Internet providers. It should be a good time with food provided by various crispy tortilla manufacturers and fried spicy chicken wings traditionally associated with a Northeast city located along the border of the two northern most countries of North America.

Another week gone and another chance for everyone to see Techdirt through someone else's eyes. While I may not be as prosaic and prolific of a commenter as some of the regulars, I hope you find some common threads in what I found poignant this week on Techdirt.

We start with the new research report from Floor64, The Sky Is Rising. While regular readers here were not surprised at the results, my first thought was how to get big content business to read and, more importantly, understand the salient points put forth. As usual, the comments ran back and forth over the standard arguments, but for me, the one from Janis stood out as an indicator of things to come where creators are no longer required to be massively successful in order to earn something from their efforts. As for the rest of the day, we had some of the all too typical indicators that the major content studios are going to continue acting like spoiled toddlers. Color me surprised... NOT!.

Tuesday morning had an article from Glyn Moody that hit close to home. Until my division was spun off and sold late last year, I was a programmer for LexisNexis (LN is a subsidiary of Reed-Elsevier). Despite my desire for the company to prosper so I could continue to receive a paycheck, the Elsevier publishing division was always one I delighted seeing in decline. I firmly believe that, as a whole, mankind is better served through open and shared research. I, for one, hope this latest boycott and alternative publishing effort succeed. Of course, following that, we had more examples of clueless content owners and their overblown sense of entitlement.

Wednesday brought some stark reminders of just how broken our current system of government really is - especially that last one. Think about it - a Senator who is doing what he can to FIX some of the very serious problems in this country is being attacked for doing his job? We really need to get out of this "R vs. D" mentality and focus on the individual issues. If only we could get people to realize that you can agree with someone on one thing and disagree with them on everything else. Madness, I tell you!

Unfortunately, work intruded most severely on Thursday, but there were two standouts. First, I took great joy in seeing that Redbox is once again standing up to Warner Bros. and their ridiculous attempts to treat consumers like cattle. I often wonder if Hollywood will ever realize that people want to be entertained, but in a manner that fits their budget and time frame. All these machinations to alter how people spend their entertainment dollars isn't going to change that one bit. Of course, much like Chosen Reject, I find this fight fascinating and hope to see some updates down the road. On the flip side, it was distressing to see yet another politician ignoring his oath of office to defend the Constitution. Regardless of opinion or even how much of a potential jerk he could be, Josh Fox had a right to record the proceedings. This is another one that I will be trying to find some follow-up on.

Ahhh, Friday. End of the week for many and a day we spend looking forward to the weekend. First up is actually a comment from Suja where a minor replacement made for, in my opinion, a much more accurate set of statements. Next, we had Capitalist Lion Tamer warning reminding us just how close to a police state the US has become and that it's not likely to get better until it's too late. The portions noting the "War on Drugs" and the corresponding comments below reminded me of the first part of an anti-SOPA post on another blog I read:

The so-called war on drugs is a joke. A sick, sad, stupid joke. It didn't get rid of drugs, it didn't reduce drug use, or drug smuggling, or drug violence, or drug related deaths. It didn't, in fact, do a damned thing. All it does is keep a lot of law enforcement types employed chasing their tails.

Think about the art of writing for a minute. Think about creative, or biographical, or whatever kind of writing. Before blogging, how many people wrote any more than it took to fill the space of postcard? If it wasn't their profession, I'd say very few. Now, it seems like everyone has had a blog at one time or another. And now "micro-blogging" is in style thanks to Twitter. Not as many words you say? Right, but it's a different skill that people are learning. Very concise wording. Do people want to post boring tweets? Of course not. People spend quite a few minutes of their day trying to write interesting, humorous, or informative Tweets and Facebook updates. Small bits of creativity for sure, but add them up on a weekly basis, and it's quite a bit.

I think of all the craftspersons who have learned from each other on-line. Popular knitting blogs for instance have taken that old past-time of grandma's and made it mainstream. Before Etsy and the like, where would a person sell the scarves and hats that they made besides the occasional craft fair? I mean, a family only needs so many scarves, and then the knitting needles were put away. Communities on the web not only serve as a place to share work and ideas, but that also serve as shops to sell your product worldwide, creating a reason to make more, and to try new, crazy ideas. Kind of incredible.

My contention is that these days we live in right now will be looked back on with longing, especially with various governments trying to push through laws to control the internet. If that happens, these will be the good old days, so don't take them for granted. Look around and enjoy. I think this is an incredible time to make things, and I hope it stays around for a while.

Last night I dreamed seemingly all night about NetBeans 7.1, the JavaFX 2.1 Developer Preview, the JDK 6 and JDK 7 installations on my CentOS Linux system, Java threads, the JDK 7 Fork/Join framework, closures... and probably a few more things were in there too. That kind of thing happens to me sometimes after a late night of programming or development-related brainstorming.

Now, if these dreams happen when I have looming deadline, I usually consider it a nightmare -- because I'll often "work" all night "solving" some problem that doesn't exist in my day world. But I'm hoping last night's dreams will ultimately prove to have been at least a little bit productive. There were plenty of curious ideas mixed in there. I'll find out if any of it's useful over the next several days...

Day work: JavaFX 2.1 Developer Preview on Linux

It's daytime now, so I'll get down to some practical work. First, there's some good news for developers who want to try out JavaFX 2.1 Developer Preview on Linux: Linux Release Notes and installation instructions are now available (that wasn't the case when I wrote my Getting Started (Very Preliminarily)... blog post a couple weeks ago). Also, the 2.1 Developer Preview is has advanced to build b11 (I originally downloaded build b9).

The instructions for JavaFX 2.1 on Linux identify the following system requirements:

• Ubuntu Linux 10.4 or higher (32 or 64 bit)
• JDK 6 update 26 or higher
• gtk2 2.18+
• libavcodec (for media)

I'm running CentOS 5.5, not Ubuntu; my current JDK 6 is prior to update 26; and rpm -q gtk2 tells me that I have gtk2 Version 2.10.4-20.el5. Not the perfect starting point... But, my guess is that likely I'll be able to get a proper configuration in place.

The latest GTK2 that's available via yum for CentOS 5.5 is still in the Version 2.10 sequence. So, I downloaded the last stable GTK2 (Version 2.24.9), and tried installing it. The result of ./configure was a bunch of missing dependencies (too old a version of GLib, and missing atk, pango, cairo, and gdk-pixbuf-2.0). Using yum to see what prepackaged versions of these are available for my CentOS system, I found that in all cases the available packages predate the required versions.

Stepping back to GTK+ 2.18 would help some, but still the dependencies could not be met by simply using the yum package manager.

So, it's a dilemma. I'd like to try out the JavaFX 2.1 Developer Preview on my CentOS system, but there's a pretty big gulf between the CentOS 5.5 packages and what's required for JavaFX 2.1. Attempting big jumps in package versions can break a stable Linux system, in my experience. And the idea of upgrading to a newer operating system isn't all that appealing (that means downtime, and I do have development deadlines to meet). In addition, there are other things I'd like to be working on as well (such as experimenting with the performance differences between various strategies for efficiently utilizing multicore computers -- all that non-JavaFX stuff I was dreaming about last night).

I'll have to think about this for a while... Or, perhaps another night of Java-centric dreaming will provide a solution!

Java.net Weblogs

Since my last blog post, several people have posted new java.net blogs:

• Sonya Barry, Guest Post: Is Java the best language to meet my needs?;
• Brian O'Neill, Bundling Gems in Jars/Wars for Jruby;
• Otavio Santana, Persist document in Cassandra; and
• Karl Schaefer, SwingX 1.6.3 Released.

Poll

Our current java.net poll asks Under JCP 2.8, EC members lose their voting rights if they miss two consecutive meetings. Your view on this?. Voting will be open until Friday, February 17.

Articles

Our latest Java.net article is Michael Bar-Sinai's PanelMatic 101.

Java News

Here are the stories we've recently featured in our Java news section:

• Michael Heinrichs demonstrates Creating read-only properties in JavaFX;
• Heather Van Cura reports JSR updates;
• Tori Wieldt announces Java Rock Stars 2011!;
• Alexandru Ersenie presents Glassfish - Vertical clustering with multiple domains;
• Hildeberto Mendonça discusses Choosing Between Vaadin and JSF;
• Jean-François Bonbhel announces Africa Android Challenge 2012;
• Alex Buckley announces JSR 308 Early Draft Review;
• Adam Bien presents Tomcat On Steroids (on Java EE 6) = TomEE--A Server Smoke Test;
• Roger Brinkley presents Java Spotlight Episode 67: Pascal Bleser on FOSDEM;
• Dustin Marx demonstrates JavaFX 2 Presents the Quadratic Formula;
• Bill B continues What's New In Java 7: Copy and Move Files and Directories;
• Adam Bien explains GlassFish / Jersey Exception "java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: object is not an instance of declaring class" And Solution;
• Lincoln Baxter III demonstrates Server side action methods on JSF ValueChange events using AJAX listeners;
• Geertjan Wielenga reveals Hidden NetBeans Feature: Export Shortcuts to HTML;
• Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine reports More Java EE 7 - JSF 2.2;

Spotlights

Our latest java.net Spotlight is Heather Van Cura's JCP 2.8 Spec Lead Materials & Adopt-a-JSR update:

Following the upgrade to the JCP 2.8 Program, the Program Office has made available the following materials for Spec Leads on the Multimedia page of jcp.org: -Transparency (December 2011 call) -JCP 2.8 Overview (October 2011 call)...

Previously, we featured Jasper Potts' Curve fitting and styling AreaChart:

I was experimenting today with extending AreaChart to do curve fitting for some example code I was hacking on. It is also a example of what can be done with styling JavaFX charts with CSS. Here is the result...

Subscriptions and Archives: You can subscribe to this blog using the java.net Editor's Blog Feed. You can also subscribe to the Java Today RSS feed and the java.net blogs feed. You can find historical archives of what has appeared the front page of java.net in the java.net home page archive.

-- Kevin Farnham
Twitter: @kevin_farnham

I am very pleased to announce the release of SwingX 1.6.3.  While the release notes contain many fixes, I wanted to take a minute to highlight some of the major changes.

First and foremost, we have more fully adopted Maven.  The project is now a collection of smaller modules. This will make it easier for clients to use only the pieces of SwingX that they need or want.  To enable us to break SwingX into smaller modules, some classes have been moved or reorganized.  Don't worry, we've left a deprecated copy in the original location in all instance but one (I'm looking at you JXBusyLabel.Direction).

Secondly for Maven, we needed to rename our groupId.  Per discussions with the maven.java.net folks, we are now using org.swinglabs.swingx as the groupId.  This is a change from org.swinglabs.  Doing so allows us to use the maven.java.net facitilities for automatically updating Maven Central with our releases.  Future releases should be a lot easier for us in that regard.

The third Maven-related change is that swingx-core no longer contains a copy or dependency on all SwingX classes.  The swingx-graphics package is not used by any of our components.  To suppliment the need to have an all-in-one jar, we have created the swingx-all module which provides all SwingX content as a single JAR file.

To highlight some non-Maven changes, we have:

• Improved our serialization support.
• Improved our beaninfo support.
• Rearchitected our plaf support to allow third party L&F support in the future.
• Fixed a ton of bugs.
• Improved our testing style and code coverage.

If anyone is experiencing any issues with out latest release, please let us know over in the forums.  Any feedback, especially about how we divided the code into modules, is always welcomed.

Thanks and enjoy!

Table 3; Command for run

New Edge Virtual Server Infrastructure effort is introduced to aid branch consolidation and WAN optimization and powered by a new hardware series called Granite.

Facebook's S1 filing reveals insights into the company's finances and its hyperactive culture, whose ethic Mark Zuckerberg describes as 'The Hacker Way'.

jwilliam3858

<a href='http://www.jandjservices.com/services.htm#lblConstruction'>dumpster </a>
<a href='http://www.jandjservices.com'>roll off containers</a>
<a href='http://www.jandjservices.com/company.htm'>construction...

As much as I know, no matter the program or utility at hand, the user's visual experience is one of the most important aspects of success, and toolbar icons can play a significant role in enhancing any visual environment. Anybody there can tell me the...

I'm using mockejb framework to mock entity beans in memory, I make a lookup, mockejb brings me a proxy for the real entity. That's working.

Hi All,

Hi,

Can somebody help me to understand a few basic concepts in java web applications framework?

Hi,

Webuzo Wordpress Stack is a free-quick-install package that allows bundling of all software (dependency) necessary to run Wordpress for development or production purposes. It includes the latest updated version of Wordpress and is pre-configured and ready-to-run.

http://www.howtoforge.com/installing-webuzo-wordpress-stack

This tutorial shows how you can install and run ownCloud3 on a Debian Squeeze or Ubuntu 11.10 system that has nginx installed instead of Apache (LEMP = Linux + nginx (pronounced "engine x") + MySQL + PHP). ownCloud enables universal access to files through the widely implemented WebDAV standard, providing a platform to easily view and sync contacts, calendars and bookmarks across devices while supporting sharing, viewing and editing via the web interface. It offers the ease-of-use of Dropbox and box.net without vendor lock in. ownCloud users can run its file sync and share services on their own hardware.

read more

The goal of this tutorial is to harden the mail server Postfix used by ISPConfig for internet mail servers where authenticated users are trusted. With this setup you will reject a great amount of spam before it passes into your mail queue, saving a lot of system resources and making your mail server strong against spammers and spam botnets.

http://www.howtoforge.com/hardening-postfix-for-ispconfig-3

Update 3.2.4 has now been released to address a compilation problem in 3.2.3.